1 Not long ago, life in our southern states was much different from the way it is today. The people there lived divided lives. White people and black people did not eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, or even drink from the same water fountains. That division is called segregation. Many people did not like that and wanted to change things, but they needed a leader. That leader was Martin Luther King, Jr.2 Dr. King was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He learned about segregation at the age of six, when the parents of his white friends would not let him play with their children anymore. After finishing college in Boston, he returned to the South and became the pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. King knew that segregation was wrong. It meant that people were treated better or worse just because of the color of their skin.3 People began to notice Dr. King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The law then said that white people got to sit at the front of the bus and got in at the front door of the bus. Blacks sat at the back of the bus and got in at the back door. On December 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks got on the bus. She had worked all day. When a white man wanted to sit in her seat, she refused, and she was arrested.4 Her arrest made many people angry. Jo Ann Robinson, leader of the Women's Political Council, suggested the black community follow a one-day boycott of the city buses. That seemed to work so well that black leaders in the community wanted to continue the boycott. The "Montgomery Improvement Association" was formed to coordinate the boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected president of the MIA. The group called for an end to segregation on city buses. Dr. King began to make speeches about civil rights.5 Blacks in Montgomery refused to ride the buses. They walked or rode bicycles to work, which made the bus company lose a lot of business. Dr. King convinced the people to act with an attitude of dignity and courage rather than anger. At age 27, his self-control and insistence on nonviolence made him a great spokesman for the boycott and a strong leader for the civil rights movement. In November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on transportation was unconstitutional. The first of many battles had been won.6 In 1957 Dr. King took another big step as a leader for civil rights by forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Then on May 17 of that year he spoke to a crowd of 15,000 in Washington, D.C.7 In response to that conference, in 1958 Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction. Not everyone liked Dr. King's influence, though. One day while on a walking tour through Harlem, he was attacked and stabbed. That did not stop him from doing what he thought was right. He met with other black leaders and President Dwight D. Eisenhower to discuss problems.8 Dr. King was very interested in the idea of nonviolent protest that Mohandas Gandhi had been teaching in India. It was an idea that Dr. King believed in, and he was finally able to go to India in 1959 to study Gandhi's ideas more fully.